But by asking schools to promote "legal alternatives" on behalf of the entertainment industry aren't schools wasting time and money? The school's technology staff is still going to be paid by the school to set up systems to push the entertainment industry's agenda. It's free advertising for music and movie studios that the school pays for. That is money taken away from eduaction to prop up an outdated and failed business model.

Because nothing says "good use of educational funds" like funneling money to record executives and Lars Ulrich. At this point I believe the entertainment industry is trying to act as absurdly as possible. The scary part is how the government supports such policies. I'm not sure when it happened but at some point the government stopped representing the people and started representing big business. Our country's founders would be sickened by this.

Some European legal ideologies are just wacky. Not that the US has it all figured out but there have been a lot of head scratchers lately. EU lawsuits against Microsoft to remove bundled apps, the Pirate Bay trial, now Google books... it's a bit laughable.

I'm just curious how they can determine that a downloaded song is illegally obtained in the first place. "A central database" that tracks users and what music they are allowed to have seems awfully Orwellian to me. Common sense would say the RIAA should be embarrassed by such a thing by now. Too bad common sense has always escaped the RIAA. Their mismanagement never ceases to amaze me.

Of course, average Joe consumer is probably the most to blame for the RIAA continuing in their evil ways. How in the world has a mass boycott not taken care of this problem by now?